Bremen, or eating goat in the dark

I'm hopping off the tour bus for a bit to tell you about Bremen. October 3rd is the Tag der Deutschen Einheit, the celebration of East and West Germany getting back together in 1990. There's only one official German celebration, and it was in Hannover this year. With streets blocked and tourists flooding in, we went to Bremen for the weekend instead.

Bremen was the first German city I had ever heard of, before I knew what Germany was. You might remember the Bremen Town Musicians, a crew of misfit animals who leave life on the farm to seek their fortunes as musicians in Bremen. Only they never get there. The animals catch some robbers in their hideout, scare them away and live in the house happily ever after. So Bremen is famous for these animals who never arrived.

When you ask someone in Hannover about Bremen, they sort of shrug and say, "it's close by". I think there's a bit of an inferiority complex going on. It would be logical if Bremen were part of Niedersachsen, the same state that Hannover is the capital of. But Bremen, Luebeck and Hamburg are city-states. Bremen is, therefore, the tiniest state in Germany. It was one of those Hanseatic Cities for a few hundred years, and powerful enough that it didn't need to be part of the Kingdom of Hannover, or any other kingdom, thank you very much. This city, which is about the same size as Hannover, has a few things to be proud of (besides the animal musicians). It is Germany's second largest port and, despite heavy bombings in World War II, its old city is largely intact, and beautiful.

Bremen Rathaus

This is a giant statue of Roland, Charlemagne's nephew and legendary warrior

I was on a quest to find this statue of the Bremen Town Musicians

The word for pug in German is Mops. Even though this one is a statue, I decided to pet him.

In the winding alleys of the Schnoor quarter

Our favorite part of Bremen, however, had nothing to do with churches or ports or singing animals. After wandering past larger and fancier spots along the river front, we ended up at Christy's West African Restaurant for dinner. We had never been to a West African restaurant, or to West Africa at all, but immediately felt at home. As soon as we arrived, the hostess said, "sit anywhere you like," in English. There was no attempt at German, because she didn't speak it. Three guys sitting by the bar were laughing. A TV was on and music was playing, at least for a while. Soon after we ordered, the power went out. So we drank Nigerian beers in the dark while the hostess fussed with lighting candles. The lights went back on, then off again. I ordered jollof rice with fish and plantains, Brian ordered goat with yams. The lights went on, but only in the front of the building. The three guys at the bar got up and started debating, as men in any culture would, which fuses must have blown, how to fix them and how to plug in the TV so that it might work. They didn't know what they were doing. Then we heard Christy up in the kitchen calling the landlord and yelling at him in loud but broken German. I am pretty sure no one has ever yelled at him like that before. As our food arrived, we realized this was the most fun we'd had at a restaurant in months.

In Germany, everything works almost perfectly, all of the time. The trains run on time, the streets are clean, pedestrians wait for green lights, no one yells. It was comforting to be in a place where things were a little unpredictable and a little bit broken. It was fun to chat with the hostess and not think through how to say the right thing in German. And the food was delicious.

Bremen can be proud of being a port city, or an independent state, or home of the singing cat and donkey. Its old town is pretty special too. But the best part of our visit there was eating at Christy's, where somehow eating goat in the dark made us feel right at home.